‘We want to reach $5 billion in revenue by 2030. That’s not just about buying more companies. It’s three things: accelerate acquisition pace, grow organically at double-digit rates and expand margins,’ says Ramsey Sayhoun, co-founder and M&A partner at Evergreen.
After closing 16 acquisitions in the fourth quarter of 2025, including 11 MSPs, Evergreen is seeing double-digit growth with a 2026 goal of 30 to 40 M&A deals.
“Q4 has always been our busiest quarter; I think about 45 percent of all acquisitions we’ve ever done have happened in Q4,” Ramsey Sayhoun, co-founder and M&A partner at San Francisco-based holding company Evergreen, told CRN in an interview. “But 2025 as a whole was by far our biggest year. We’ve reached a different level of conviction in what we’re building.”
Evergreen’s decentralized, buy-and-hold strategy, a model that allows acquired companies to retain their brands, leadership and community presence, continues to resonate strongly with owners weighing their exit options.
“For the first few years, we were really good at not buying businesses and not messing them up,” Sayhoun said. “Now we’re good at buying businesses and making them better. That’s the shift. We’ve learned what works in this industry, and we’ve gotten very good at accelerating growth.”
That confidence has allowed Evergreen to move strategically in a sellers’ market where valuations remain high. Rather than rely solely on acquisition volume, Sayhoun said Evergreen’s value creation playbook, which is a detailed, post-close growth road map, has unlocked returns even as purchase prices rise.
One of the company’s goals, meanwhile, is to hit $5 billion in revenue by 2030. The company hit $1 billion in revenue in 2025, making it the first billion-dollar MSP.
CRN spoke further with Sayhoun about 2026 M&A strategy, differentiation and how MSPs in Evergreen’s portfolio are approaching AI.
What drove the historic level of deal activity in Q4?
Q4 has always been seasonally big for us. It’s funny, nearly half of all our acquisitions historically have happened in Q4. But 2025 overall was our biggest year ever. A few things drove that. First, our decentralized buy-and-hold strategy is still genuinely unique. People say they’re going to do it, but most trend toward integration. We’ve been doing this for eight years, and that consistency has built trust.
Second, we’ve scaled the team. We now have about 12 people focused solely on MSP acquisitions. That changes your capacity. And third, and this is the biggest shift, we’re no longer just protecting what we buy. Early on, we were good at not messing businesses up. Now we’re good at making them better. We have a tangible value creation plan for every acquisition. Clear levers. Clear timelines. And we execute it consistently. That’s unlocked a new level of confidence.
Why does the decentralized buy-and-hold model resonate so strongly with MSP owners?
Put yourself in the owner’s shoes. You’ve spent 20 or 30 years building this company. Your brand means something in your community. Your team has families. You can either preserve that or roll it up into something where the brand disappears. For most founders, that’s not a hard decision. Pride matters. Legacy matters. We give them an option to keep what they built intact, and that’s rare.
How are you thinking about growth beyond acquisitions?
We want to reach $5 billion in revenue by 2030. That’s not just about buying more companies. It’s three things: accelerate acquisition pace, grow organically at double-digit rates and expand margins.
Last year we grew roughly 30 percent to 40 percent total. Organic growth was double digits on both top and bottom line. The rest came from acquisitions. But organic growth is critical. If you can’t grow what you own, you shouldn’t be buying more.
How central is AI-driven transformation to Evergreen’s strategy?
It’s critical. Our decentralization is a huge advantage right now. There’s uncertainty about what the MSP industry will look like post-AI. Instead of making one massive bet, we’re making multiple contained bets. We ran an internal process where MSPs pitched how they’d use investment capital to aggressively transform around AI. We selected three and removed profitability constraints so they can reinvest heavily.
That’s powerful. Innovation in a decentralized model lets you experiment without putting the whole company at risk. I think that’s going to prove to be a major differentiator.
So how active do you expect 2026 to be in terms of M&A?
Very active. It’s a sellers’ market and valuations are high, but because we’ve gotten better at growing businesses post-close, we’re still seeing strong returns. We’ve already closed two deals this year, have several under LOI (letter of intent), and expect between 30 and 40 MSP acquisitions in 2026. The pipeline is strong.
What’s your message to the channel about what to expect from Evergreen over the next 12 months?
There are two things. One, we’re going to keep pushing the pace on M&A because we believe in our ability to grow companies organically after acquisition. And two, I think we’re going to prove that decentralization is an asset in the AI era. Innovation doesn’t have to come from one centralized machine. It can come from empowered operators in local markets. I think that’s going to be the way to win.
